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THE HERALD DREAM
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THE HERALD DREAM
An Approach to theInitial Dream in Psychotherapy
Richard Kradin MD, IAAP
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First published in 2006 by
Karnac Books
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2006 by Richard Kradin
The rights of Richard Kradin to be identified as the author of this work have been
asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN10: 1-85575-450-9
ISBN13: 978-1-85575-450-8
Edited, designed, and typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to parents who hoped that I would grow up
to be a doctor but trained me to be an analyst; to Cheryl who taught
me where the quotation marks go; to my kids who put up with a
Jungian dad; and to Joe and Claude, who, respectively, are the best
dog and cat in the world.
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CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ixFOREWORD xi
Part 1Dreams: Theory and Practice 1
CHAPTER ONEIntroduction 3
CHAPTER TWODreams in Theory 9
CHAPTER THREEDreams in Practice 43
CHAPTER FOURApproaching the Dream 56
Part 2Herald Dreams 63
CHAPTER FIVEThe Centrality of Dreams 65
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CHAPTER SIXChains 73
CHAPTER SEVENThe Cook 86
CHAPTER EIGHTBombs Away 94
CHAPTER NINEShadowlands 105
CHAPTER TENMy Big Fat Greek Wedding 115
CHAPTER ELEVENThe Reptilian Brain 122
CHAPTER TWELVE
Out of Control 129
CHAPTER THIRTEENDreams in Supervision 138
CHAPTER FOURTEENConclusion 143
REFERENCES 146
INDEX 150
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1 Jung’s typology of the ego 15
Figure 2 Carl Jung 22
Figure 3 Sigmund Freud 25
Figure 4 Jung’s model of the psyche 29
Figure 5 The vector of individuation 44
Figure 6 Trajectories of interpersonal interaction 49
Figure 7 Joseph telling his dream 71
Figure 8 Prometheus bound 82
Figure 9 Egg 91
Figure 10 Apocalypse 99
Figure 11 Shadow 107
Figure 12 Athene 118
Figure 13 Dragon 126
Figure 14 Sisyphus and boulder 132
Figure 15 Zeus and thunderbolt 140
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FOREWORD
I am privileged to teach a course on dream interpretation to trainees
at the Center for Psychoanalytical Studies at the Massachusetts
General Hospital. Whereas most of the trainees have been trained in
modern psychoanalytical theory and technique, few are well
acquainted with Jungian psychology or with its specific approach to
dream interpretation. Jung suggested that the unconscious has
objective qualities and that dreams can be accurately evaluated even
in the absence of any a priori knowledge of the dreamer. It invariablycomes as a surprise to trainees to discover how much information
can be gleaned from dreams via such a symbolic approach.
My own Jungian training was preceded by years of psycho-
analytic psychotherapeutic training during which I learned the
importance of developmental history, oedipal dynamics, and of
working in the transference. My interests in comparative religion
and Buddhist psychology have also opened new avenues to my
understanding of the human psyche and have influenced how Iapproach my work with dreams.
Despite important ideological differences between Freudian
and Jungian analysis, I have come to believe that these approaches
are complementary and require each other in order to achieve a
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fuller understanding of the psyche. It is primarily for this reason that
I have chosen to write this text. Although it is formally an introduc-
tion to the initial or herald dream in analysis, its broad goal is toillustrate how these different schools of analytical thought can be
effectively combined to yield a more effective therapeutic approach.
But before one can integrate these approaches, it is important to
understand how Freudian and Jungian schools of depth psychology
conceive of the unconscious and its symbolic representations. The
first part of this text is devoted primarily to an exploration of these
differences. In addition, it attempts to examine how after nearly a
century of analytic practice, they can be reconciled with recentobservations yielded by neurological and cognitive psychological
research.
The remainder of the text is devoted to examining herald dreams.
But as the approach to the herald dream is identical to that of other
dreams, this text is also a practical primer of dream interpretation. It
aims at demonstrating how dream interpretation can be synthesized
with the other transactions of the treatment. For practitioners who
may be skeptics concerning the importance of dreams, it is myexpectation that this text will dispel their doubts.
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Part 1
Dreams
Theory and Practice
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CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
In an essay entitled the Practical Use of Dream Analysis (Jung
1961), Carl Jung suggests that:
The initial dreams that appear at the very outset of the treatment often
bring to light the essential etiological factors (of the neurosis) in the most
unmistakable way.
Elsewhere in the same essay, he notes:
Initial dreams are often amazingly lucid and clear cut. But as the
work of analysis progresses, the dreams tend to lose their clarity.
To herald means to announce or to foretell. Although dreams may
arguably reflect actual precognition, e.g., by predicting a death or a
catastrophic event, interpretations based on precognition are gener-
ally best avoided in the practice of analysis.
1
The herald dream, i.e.,the first dream offered in analysis, does not foretell specific events;
but it does invariably identify the issues that will subsequently be
important in the treatment. By defining the “initial conditions” of
the psyche in treatment via an examination of the herald dream, it is
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often possible with a high degree of accuracy to predict the sub-
sequent “trajectory of the treatment”. Admittedly, psychotherapy
is more complex than the motion of a Newtonian particle. But theherald dream reveals archetypal elements that are subject to the rules
of the psyche.
As James Hillman, a Jungian analyst points out in Dream and the
Underworld (Hillman 1975), herald dreams may occur:
on the eve of the first session, after the first session, be a recent one
that the patient recalls, or even one from childhood. They have been
considered to be of diagnostic and prognostic significance, indicatingwhere the problem lies and what is likely to be made of them.
Once the core issue, or the etiological factor, as Jung termed it,
has been identified, much of what will subsequently appear in
the treatment follows predictably and can be elucidated within
the transference. For this reason, the herald dream has a privileged
position with respect to subsequent dreams.
Many patients report dreams that they had the night before theirfirst appointment. In such cases, the stimulus of entering therapy
has likely evoked the dream. I view any dream that occurs between
the time of initial contact with the patient and the first therapy
session as a herald dream. In other cases, the herald dream may be
reported weeks, months, or even years into the treatment. But when-
ever it occurs, it is a purposefully evocative subliminal effort to
engage with the analyst.
The herald dream can represent the guiding metaphor for thetreatment. By explicating this dream, and, as importantly, by return-
ing to it during the course of the treatment, both patient and
analyst gain a better appreciation of how the patient’s core issues are
transforming. Subsequent dreams can be used to compile a dream
series that amplifies prior interpretations of the herald dream.
Dreams have been a topic of interest since the dawn of history.
Whereas the ancients viewed dreams as nocturnal messages from
the gods (Von Franz 1991), from a modern secular perspective thisidea is dif ficult to accept. A substantial portion of human adult life is
spent dreaming, and an even larger part of the newborn’s experi-
ence is dominated by dream-like states (Jouvet 1999). Yet, no one has
determined why we dream. Opinions vary considerably concerning
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the relevance of dreams, with some holding that they are of no
importance, while others view them as the portal to the source of the
psyche. This controversy is not new. History suggests that therehave always been those who placed little stock in dreams, those
who have organized their lives around them, and others who might
be termed agnostics.2
Hillman has suggested that the message of the dream is distorted
when it is translated into the language of waking discourse (Hillman
1975). But engaging the dream in its own domain is an opus contra
naturam3 for the waking ego. The ego instead insists that the dream
come to it; and this can only be achieved by its interpretation.The aim of dream interpretation is not unique. It can be argued
that Freud interpreted dreams in the service of increasing ego
consciousness, whereas Jung interpreted them in the service of
individuation.
As might be expected, the patterns of dreams must be recognized
if they are to be interpreted. Jung viewed the patterns of dreams as
archetypal; i.e., as aspects of transpersonal human experience that are
not primarily dependent on personal history. However, dreams arealways personal, as they are dreamt by unique individuals. A com-
parable situation is encountered in evolution, where genetic
changes are primarily responsible for evolutionary changes, but
their selection occurs at the level of the individual.
I conceive of dreams as the vectorial product of the archetypal
and personal forces that govern experience. Personality inheres to
dreams and transmits idiosyncratic elements to its archetypal under-
pinnings. The enormous potential for gleaning meaning fromdreams is such that when a Talmudic sage took a single dream to
two-dozen interpreters:
Each interpreted it differently and all of their interpretations were
fulfilled. (Taubenhaus, Wise et al. 1918)
Dreams are expressed as symbols. From the perspective of con-
sciousness, symbols, and therefore dreams as well, represent riddlesthat concomitantly pose questions while making statements. For
this reason, efforts at arriving at the correct explanation of a dream
are as misdirected as Oedipus’ response to the Sphinx,4 precisely
because symbols are not definitive. The waking ego is prone to err
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in imagining that dreams have linear solutions, but symbols are
intrinsically non-linear. Instead, like a differential equation, every
dream has a set of possible solutions. For this reason, the meaning of a dream can always be re-visited and re-visioned.
At the turn of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud was convinced
that he was poised to solve the important problem of why humans
behave as they do. He recognized that there were unconscious psy-
chological forces driving the conscious ego “like a rider on a horse”,
to use his simile. Freud arrived at this awareness via an analysis of
his own dreams. In his landmark work, The Interpretation of Dreams5
(Freud 1900), Freud suggested that dreams were the direct or“royal” path to the unconscious. In a letter to his longtime confi-
dante, Wilhelm Fliess, Freud mused that he would best be remem-
bered by future generations for having unraveled the mystery of
dreams.
As a physician,6 Freud applied his new insights primarily to the
treatment of the neuroses. He attributed a key role in the theory and
practice of psychoanalysis to dreams and he never deviated from
this position.7
But at the turn of the 21st century, dreams no longercarry the privileged status that Freud attributed to them (Khan
1976). Currently, many practicing psychotherapists have little inter-
est in dreams and limited expertise in their interpretation. Multiple
factors account for this change. In most academic medical centers
in the United States, psychopharmacological interventions have
become the mainstay of psychiatric treatment. When psychothera-
pies are pursued at all, they are most often short-term cognitive-
behavioral treatments. This continues an intellectual tradition that began with the Enlightenment in the 18th century, when religion,
superstition, and other imaginal elements were devalued with
respect to rational discursive thought.
Cognitive-behavioral approaches place limited value on symbolic
thinking. This has led to a general movement away from the exam-
ination of the unconscious within psychotherapy, unfortunately at
the same time that research has begun to scientifically establish a
critical role for subliminal processes. This trend may be ill con-ceived, as the source of neurotic symptoms, in no small measure, can
be attributed to the modern inclination to devalue what cannot be
measured or controlled. The cognitive mode of experience has
become increasingly important to man. But it remains only one of
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several modes of human experience. This imbalance between
experiential modes contributes to neurotic suffering.
Although dreams exhibit innumerable variations (Van de Castle1994) certain motifs recur. These include, e.g., dreams of flying,
falling, or being chased, to name but a few. A spectrum of feelings has
also been reported in dreams, e.g., fear, joy, and sadness. Patients
who have suffered trauma frequently report repetitive invariant
motifs that tend to recreate the features of the traumatic event.
Other dreams are best considered iatrogenic, i.e., they are evoked
by psychotherapeutic intervention (Harris 1962). The initial or herald
dream reported by a patient during a treatment properly belongs inthis category. It offers a synopsis of the core psychological conflict
that the patient brings to the treatment. When carefully examined, it
can yield crucial information with respect to diagnosis, prognosis,
and the optimal stance to be adopted by the analyst. For this reason,
it is important to recognize the privileged position of the herald
dream and to make substantial efforts in its interpretation.
Notes
1. Francis Bacon came to the same conclusion in his Essays in the early 17th
century. On the other hand, Jung in his autobiography Memories,
Dreams, Reflections interpreted one of his dreams as foretelling the
advent of the first World War.
2. Indeed, it might be possible to develop an entire typology based on theperspective towards dreams.
3. Opus contra naturam = Work against nature. I have adopted certain Latin
terms that recur in Jung’s opus in the present text. It is recognized that
they are attractive to some but may be off-putting to others.
4. Oedipus is asked by the Sphinx, “what being with one voice has some-
times two feet, sometimes three, sometimes four, and is weakest when it
has the most?” Oedipus answers “man” and is spared his life. But the
riddle is a symbol that cannot be answered definitively. What Oedipus
fails to recognize is that he is man and that the answer must include aknowledge of oneself as the Delphian oracle suggested.
5. This work was completed and released in the Fall of 1899 but Freud
purposefully had it dated 1900 by the editor in order to herald its
importance to the new century.
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6. Freud was by training a neurologist and neuropathologist. His primary
exposure to psychological problems was via hysteria and other “neur-
oses”. He was not a psychiatrist by training and his exposure to patientswith severe mental illnesses was limited.
7. It is not by coincidence that both Freud and Jung emphasized the
importance of dreams. They recognized the source of the neuroses as a
dissociation between the ego and the symbolic and mythical elements of
the unconscious. Both men gleaned their understanding of the psyche
by their personal work with dreams and the imaginal contents of the
psyche. Their descent into the unconscious proved to be the basis for the
remainder of their life’s work, something that few subsequent analysts
can lay claim to.
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CHAPTER TWO
Dreams in Theory
In her book Dreams (Von Franz 1991), the Jungian analyst Marie-
Louise Von Franz describes how Hannibal, driven by ambition
to conquer Rome, misinterpreted the meaning of his own dream
the night before a fateful battle, leading to an ignominious defeat.
Important scientific insights, like Kekule’s recognition of the con-
figuration of the benzene ring, have occurred in dreams. Kekule
described the image of a snake in uroboric configuration, i.e., swal-
lowing its own tail. Upon waking, the scientist recognized that thecarbon structure must be a closed ring.
Extraordinary works of art have also emerged in dreams.
Coleridge’s epic poem Kubla Khan appeared in complete form in a
dream. Coleridge immediately began to transcribe it faithfully upon
awakening but the ending was lost when he was interrupted by a
visitor at the door.
The importance of dreams has in general depended on their inter-
pretation. But why dreams should be interpreted at all is a questionthat is rarely addressed.1 As the desire to discover meaning and
to dispel uncertainty characterizes human behavior, it is possible
that the obscure nature of the dream itself evokes efforts at its
interpretation. But before embarking on how to approach dream
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interpretation, it is worthwhile to examine what is currently known
about dreams.
Sleep and Dreams
The burgeoning field of sleep biology has yielded substantial infor-
mation concerning the dreaming brain. It has been established that
dreams are a regular and periodic feature of sleep. The majority
of dreams are reported during rapid eye movement (REM2
) sleep,although dreams may be reported at virtually any point in the sleep
cycle. In REM sleep, the brain shows a pattern of electrical activity
that mimics wakefulness. Whereas the ocular muscles exhibit rapid
jerky or saccadic eye movements, peripheral skeletal muscular activ-
ities are inhibited. Jouvet referred to this condition as “paradoxical
sleep” and suggested that it includes states of mental activity that
are distinct from deep sleep and from wakefulness (Jouvet 1999).
Most dreams are reported just prior to waking and the averagedream lasts for several minutes. Although the phenomenology of
dreams has been exhaustively catalogued, no overarching theory
of dreams has been developed.
Some eminent neuroscientists, including Francis Crick, the dis-
coverer of DNA and the genetic code (Crick and Mitchison 1983),
have suggested that dreams are the brain’s way of ridding itself of
surplus information—a sort of nocturnal “spring cleaning”. Others
including Alan Hobson, a Harvard dream researcher (Hobson andMcCarley 1977), view dreams as synthetic creations of the sleeping
brain. It is extraordinary that such divergent opinions exist amongst
respected researchers. It is likely that their disparate views reflect
more the differences in the underlying psychologies of these
scientists than the importance of dreams.
What a dream means is beyond our capacity to determine because
meaning cannot be established objectively. Nevertheless, most
would agree that dreams can serve as effective targets for meaning-laden projections. Suf fice it to say that at least some psychotherap-
ists, following in the ancient tradition of dream interpreters, are
inclined to detect meaning in dreams (Graves 1924) and to conclude,
like Freud, that working with dreams is therapeutically beneficial.
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Dreams and Neuroscience
Dreams represent a stream of sensory percepts rooted primarily ininner or interoceptive experience. Based on research with cats, Jouvet
suggested that the ponto-geniculate-occipital pathways—neural
circuits critical for visual information processing—play a dominant
role in dreams. But the spectrum of sensory experiences reported in
human dreams requires contributions from virtually all of the neural
areas that register sensation. It has been empirically demonstrated
that olfactory and taste sensations are not frequently reported in
dreams, whereas visual images, tactile sensations and sounds arecommonplace (Van de Castle 1994).
Exteroceptive stimuli, i.e., sensory stimuli from the outer world,
can be incorporated in real time into dreams, generally as distorted
percepts. Freud cites examples (Freud 1900) in which external
stimuli were seamlessly incorporated into the dream narrative.
Consider the following observation by Hilderbrand, an early dream
researcher, quoted in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams:
In former years I occasionally made use of an alarm clock in order to
wake up regularly at a certain hour in the morning. It probably hap-
pened hundreds of times that the sound of this instrument fitted into
along and connected dream, as if the entire dream had been espe-
cially designed for it, as if it found in this sound its appropriate and
logically indispensable point, its inevitable issue.
The rapidity with which the dream incorporates stimuli from theouter environment indicates how closely linked are the experience
of inner and outer events. Infant observation has demonstrated
that input from one of the senses can cross rapidly into other spheres
of sensory experience. For example, the sight of the mother’s face
produces immediate proprioceptive changes in the movement of
the infant’s facial musculature, a phenomenon referred to as cross-
modal competence (Schore 1994). According to Kagan:
Cross-modal competence matures in a major way after six months
because the pre-frontal cortex plays an important role in linking
information from different modalities, and anatomical links among
sensory association areas, the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala
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(which contains sensory information from many modalities) and the
prefrontal cortex are immature during the first six months.
According to Gerald Edelman (Edelman 1989), the construction of
higher order mental experience is dependent on re-entrant process-
ing of information from different brain regions. Dreams emerge as a
product of re-entrant processing of distributed memories and cross-
modal sensations synthesized during sleep. What is extraordinary
about dreams is that these perceptions are knitted together in a
manner that is interpretable.
Jouvet echoes the ancient Upanishad texts (Mèuller 1879) in sug-gesting that the mental states of dreams are distinct from those of
dreamless sleep. When dreaming animals are released from the
muscular paralysis of REM sleep, they tend to act out their dreams,
without awareness of their surroundings. In dreams, subjective con-
sciousness is embedded within a stream of images but it is, con-
comitantly, dissociated from external awareness. Whereas dreamers
seldom distinguish between themselves and the dream-ego in their
reports of dreams, thedream-ego
is not isomorphic with the wak-ing ego. For one thing, the volitional capacity of the dream-ego
is limited with respect the waking ego and the dream-ego often
appears to be passively going “along for the ride”. In truth, it is
questionable whether the waking ego is freer to act in its own
right than the dream-ego, but most of us are unable to discern this
limitation while awake.3
Consciousness in Dreams
Despite the fact that one often refers to “dream consciousness”, there
is no such monolithic phenomenon. Instead, fluctuating levels of
consciousness are observed and these convey important information
concerning the dreamer. Critical discernment is a feature of con-
sciousness that requires the activities of the left pre-frontal cortex.Normally, during wakefulness, the right and left-brains cooperate
by shuttling information between bundles of connecting axons. A
variety of interesting observations have been made in patients
who have had these connections surgically ablated, i.e., in so-called
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“split-brain experiments”. Although the brain shows substantial
redundancy in its hemispheric activities, the right-brain is primarily
responsible for establishing the temporo-spatial features and emo-tional qualities of experience, whereas the left-brain monitors
experience for deviations from what is expected. In reality, sensitiv-
ity to novelty is far more complex. As Kagan points out (Kagan 2002)
the response to novelty is mediated by:
neuron ensembles in many parts of the brain including frontal, par-
ietal, and temporal areas, and especially the medial temporal area
and entorhinal cortices, hippocampus, and amygdala.
When immersed in dream sleep, the level of discernment by the left-
brain and the capacity to detect novelty is diminished. As a con-
sequence, the images of the dream play out automatically, and the
dream-ego is embedded in the images. Critical discernment of
the unexpected may be altogether absent; or it can fluctuate within
the dream.
Dreams exhibit a level of absorption that is comparable to what oneexperiences while watching a movie. In this state, the dominance of
discerning consciousness is suspended with respect to expectations,
so that one does not question whether what is appearing on the
screen is real. As the writer Susan Sontag notes in her monograph
Regarding the Pain of Others:
The attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was
described as “unreal”, “surreal”, “like a movie” in many of the firstaccounts of those who escaped from the towers or watched nearby.
After four decades of big-budget Hollywood disaster films, “It felt
like a movie” seems to have displaced the way survivors of a catas-
trophe used to express the short-term unassimilability of what they
had gone through: “It felt like a dream”.
However, the discernment of novelty can intrude into dreams,
especially when the dream narrative introduces material that isfar removed from the expectations of waking consciousness. For
example, I recently had a dream in which my father appeared sev-
eral years after his death. After my initial happiness in seeing him
again, I experienced the cognitive dissonance of realizing that he
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was in fact dead. The discrepancy became more lucid with my
increasing level of arousal, and I awoke shortly afterwards. This is a
common occurrence in dreams but its significance has rarely beenconsidered.
The fact that dreams occur when waking consciousness is dimi-
nished is one way of understanding Freud’s dictum that dreams
are the via regia to the unconscious. But this is true, not because
consciousness is lost—after all we are aware of our dreams— but
because a particularly quality of waking consciousness is no longer
dominant. Some “thoughtful” dreamers, who exhibit highly
developed levels of critical discernment while awake, tend to reportdreams that do not differ considerably from the narratives of their
waking lives.4 For these individuals, their level of vigilance persists
even during sleep and access to unconscious material is resisted by
left-brain dominance. The same individuals often report dif ficulties
in identifying their affect and exhibit obsessive personality styles.
According to Kagan (Kagan 2002), the right-brain elaborates the
lower frequency components of an event, whereas the left-brain
elaborates high-frequency information in an array of elements. Low-frequency sounds, such as those that are experienced by the fetus in
utero, may account for the earlier development of the right brain
structures. When the infant later encounters spoken language, the
underlying tones and rhythm of the voice, i.e., prosody, continue to
be elaborated primarily by the right brain, whereas the rapidly
changing complexities of the phonemes of the spoken language are
elaborated by the left brain, via semantic networks.
Experience is parsed amongst schemata, sensorimotor structures,and semantic networks. Schemata are the contextualized representa-
tions of events and the earliest “structures” to emerge from sensory
activation. These schemata are likely shared to some extent with
other species. However, the ability to construct language-based
semantic networks, including conceptual, metaphoric, and abstract
thought, is a distinctly human quality, and it may be the root of the
neuroses. But it should not be concluded, as is all too often the case
within psychoanalytic circles, that the disposition to experience theworld primarily via semantic structuring is a defensive neurotic
style to isolate affect, as differences in how experiences are pro-
cessed is a complex issue that can in part be attributed to genetic
predisposition, familial predispositions, and cultural tendencies.
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Carl Jung recognized this when he developed a typology of per-
sonality based on the activities of ego-consciousness, in which he
categorized thinking as directly opposed to feeling (Figure 1). Jung
did not conceive of feeling as an emotion but instead as how the
psyche evaluates experience as “good, bad, or neutral”.5 Although
criticized for its dichotomous emphasis, at its polar extremes
descriptive thinking (semantic representation) does effectivelyexclude feeling (schematic representation). Excessive thinking can
also be associated with an inability to adequately evaluate inner
experience, which, in turn, can diminish action, as epitomized by the
stasis of Shakespeare’s eloquent but ruminating Hamlet. In extreme
forms, generally associated with organic pathology, the inability to
access affect schematas, as Damasio points out (Damasio 2000), can
result in a global inability to act.
Dreams and Time
Space and time comprise the dimensionality of our universe. Time
can be imagined as linear and directed or as circular. The latter con-
ception is often adopted by myth and ritual, as it emphasizes the
repetitive nature of the cycles of the seasons and those of life anddeath. The circular conception is generally applied to time’s passage
on a large scale. It achieves hyperbolic proportions in the mythic
Hindu concept of the kalpa, a mega-cycle of 4,320,000,000 years that
culminates, only immediately to begin again. By contrast, the
FIGURE 1 Jung’s typology of the ego
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conventional experience of time is linear and sequential.6 This
experience of time leads to the idea of causality, where earlier events
lead directly to later ones. Whereas dreams generally representimages in sequence, the idea of “sequential” in dreams does not
necessarily mean that causality also applies. Dream actions may or
may not follow causally and abrupt shifts in both time and space
often occur. This led Freud to conclude that the unconscious has no
sense of time.
Modern physics has demonstrated that time and space are relative
to objective observers (Einstein 1960). But time is also relative with
respect to subjectivity. The philosopher J.T. Fraser (Fraser 1975)categorized time from this perspective.7 He suggested that time
exists as nested interpenetrating umwelts. Fraser appears to be
positing that changing mental states are associated with shifting
perceptions of time. This includes states that are best termed
psychoid,8 i.e., beyond psychic registration, as well as those that apply
to waking consciousness. Fraser’s schema includes four categories
of temporality (Table 1). Atemporality, in which there is no time or
consciousness, may best describe the Buddhist state of nirodhanirvana, i.e., temporary mental extinction that has been reported
by advanced meditators.9 This is described as beyond all categories
of space-time and is frankly impossible to distinguish from psycho-
logical death.
Prototemporality and eotemporality represent non-linear modes of
temporality that are properly termed psychoid, as they apply to
states that are beyond the realm of normal perception. They may
correspond to altered states achievable via meditation. Levels of deep absorption or jhanas include experiences in which time dilates
and there is “neither perception nor non-perception”.
Table 1 The experience of time
• Atemporality • No time, nirvana
• Prototemporality • Neither perception nornon-perception
• Biotemporality • Primary consciousness
• Nootemporality • Reflective consciousness
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Biotemporality applies to what Gerald Edelman has termed primary
consciousness (Edelman 1989). Biotemporality includes an experience
of sequential moments but without the capacity to discern past orfuture events.10 It is the consciousness of the present moment, that is
commonly achieved in meditation practice. Biotemporality is also
the dominant temporal experience of dreams, when the dream-ego
is immersed in the moment with no awareness of past or future.
Freud may have more accurately had biotemporality in mind when he
concluded that the unconscious had no sense of time.
Nootemporality is as experienced in most moments of waking reflec-
tive consciousness. It requires cognitive discernment and the activ-ities of an evolved prefrontal cortex. In nootemporality, time is also
“tensed” so that past, present, and future are perceived as elements
of experience.
Both waking states and dreams exhibit fluctuating mental states
that include biotemporality and nootemporality. For example, in the
dream that I described earlier, in which I saw my deceased father,
the dream-ego’s experience of biotemporality was transformed into
one of nootemporality, as only in nootemporality can the distinction between present and past be discerned.
Although we rarely consider it, affects are linked inextricably to
how time is experienced. For example, anxiety dreams always indi-
cate fear of what has not yet occurred. As awareness of the future
is a feature of nootemporality, and anxiety in dreams implies an
increased level of discernment by the dream-ego, presumably reflect-
ing a relative increase in the activities of the left pre-frontal cortex.
The perception of time in dreams also tells us something about itsrelationship to the “unconscious”, for if dreams were an unmodified
statement by the unconscious, anxiety dreams could not occur.
Instead, dreams must represent a product of altered consciousness,
whose accurate relationship to what we imagine to be unconscious
is strictly speaking hypothetical.11 As Freud noted, all mental repre-
sentations, including dreams are “compromise formations”, reflect-
ing a synthesis of the nocturnal activities of the right and left brain,
and with varying degrees of primary and secondary consciousness.References to the unconscious will be made throughout this text,
in keeping with psychoanalytic tradition. But one must not make
the mistake of reifying the unconscious as an actual location in the
mind, as opposed to conceiving of it as a set of processes that are
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subliminal and unavailable to consciousness. In Freud’s earlier topo-
graphic model of the psyche, he emphasized the importance of the
preconscious mind that includes contents that can be raised to thelevel of consciousness. As the psychoanalyst David Shapiro (Shapiro
1981) notes, it is likely that much of what we nominally refer to as
unconscious is actually more accurately preconscious.
All models betray the tendency of consciousness to embody
abstract processes. Consider, for example, the fictitious model of the
atom. No one has ever seen an atom, nor does quantum mechanics
suggest that anything like an atom actually exists. Nevertheless,
most of us conceive of it with a solid nucleus and orbiting electrons.The psychological inclination to imagine process as things, or as
some have put it, verbs as nouns, pervades collective imagination.
This poses its greatest problem in religion. The human psyche is
naturally inclined to reify the abstraction of deity. This yields a ten-
dency towards iconography within religious traditions that is per-
petually set against opposing iconoclasm. The ancient giant stone
Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, destroyed by Islamic funda-
mentalists, have been the most recent well-publicized casualty of this conflict.
The same conflict persists at a psychological level when we
refer, e.g., to the “unconscious”, as opposed to unconscious process.
This tendency has important implications for therapy. By reifying
the activities of the psyche, it may be possible to access pre-verbal
affect schematas that are linked to images, and that cannot be
entered via semantic approaches.
In the ontogeny of the psyche, schematic structures precede seman-tic networks. We acknowledge the more evolved nature of semantic
abstractions in our daily discourse when we refer in somewhat
pejorative terms to someone as being “concrete”. The fact is that the
adult human psyche has dif ficulty experiencing what cannot be seen
or touched, i.e., what cannot be experienced via the senses. Jungian
therapy aims at bypassing semantic abstractions by promoting work
with dream-images and by encouraging the reification of mental
images via painting, sculpture, etc., in order to better access affectdirectly.
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Dreams and the Unconscious
It is impossible to appreciate dreams within the context of depth psy-chology without exploring the attitudes that Freud and Jung brought
to their understandings of unconscious process. The following dis-
cussion investigates these differences and how they potentially may
be synthesized to yield a fuller appreciation of dreams.
Freud
The ego mediates between the inner world of subjectivity and theouter objective world. But the senses are designed primarily to inter-
face with the outer world. For this reason, interiority is not the pri-
mary object of waking consciousness. Psychoanalysis attempts to
reverse this process by taking subjectivity as its primary object.
Freud aimed at enhancing the ego’s awareness of interior experi-
ence, as evidenced by the goal of psychoanalysis, i.e., “where id
(read: unrecognized internal experience) once was, ego shall be”.
For classical Freudians, the dream is a manifestation of id12
impulses distorted by a dream censor that defends the dreaming ego
in the service of preserving sleep. The dream achieves this by effect-
ively guising the wishes of the subliminal id. As Frank Sulloway
emphasizes in his book Freud: Biologist of the Mind (Sulloway 1992),
Freud was greatly influenced by Darwin and by the idea that the
human psyche evolved from a primitive subhuman psychic system
the Id (It). Freud conceived of the Id primarily as the repository of
repressed desires that were unacceptable to the acculturated ego (I).For this reason, the Freudian dream conveys its purpose or telos,13
in potentia, as the manifest dream effectively conceals the latent dream.
Freud initially conceived of the latent dream as a wish of a sexual
nature. He later included aggression as a feature of the id, largely
based on his understanding of Darwinian evolution, as dependent
on both the reproduction of the species and survival of the fittest.
In order to interpret the Freudian dream, one must identify the id
wishes by first deconstructing the dream-work . The dream-work repre-sents a set of mental operations via which a dream-censor distorts the
id impulses. The operations of the dream-work include condensation,
displacement, regression, reversal, distortion, over-determination,
archaization, and symbolization. By recognizing their expression
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within the manifest dream, Freud claimed that the underlying sexual
or aggressive wish could be detected.
Freud’s concept of the dream effectively turns conventional realityon its head. What is concealed by the dream is the “objective” truth,
whereas what is revealed is designed to deceive. This idea is accur-
ately termed paranoid, as one must “know (noia) around (para)” the
manifest dream, in order to understand its intention. While it is pos-
sible that neurotic aspects of Freud’s personality predisposed him to
be mistrustful, it must be conceded that if the unconscious cannot be
known directly, then what is unconscious must by definition be
“concealed”. However concealment has a variety of implicationswith respect to consciousness.
The metapsychology of psychoanalysis was derived primarily
from clinical observations of hysterical patients. Based on these,
Freud concluded that the unconscious was primarily comprised of
repressed memories and affects, a sort of underworld dungeon to
which unacceptable thoughts and feelings were banished by the
acculturated ego. This view differs significantly from the modern
perspective that conceives of the unconscious as an information pro-cessing matrix from which consciousness emerges. In other words,
consciousness requires the unconscious for its expression. Whereas
Freud alluded to “archaic” aspects within the unconscious that were
not primarily attributable to repression, he chose not to explore their
contributions to the mind.
The tension between what is revealed and concealed is not
original to psychoanalysis. The idea dominates many religious
traditions. In the theosophies of the East, including Hinduism,Daoism, and Mahayana Buddhism, what is revealed to man is con-
sidered illusory, i.e., maya. What can be seen or named is not the
deeper reality or “The Way (Dao)”, as Lao-Tse states in the Dao Te
Ching (Laozi, Ramsay et al. 1993). Western religions also address
what is “revealed” and “concealed”. In Deuteronomy (29:29), the
limits of revelation are expressed as follows.
The concealed things belong to the Lord, but those things that arerevealed belong to us and to our children forever.
If we read this verse as psychology rather than theology, it is con-
sistent with the modern idea that what can ultimately be known by
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the human mind is limited. We are a product of the functional limits
of the psyche. We cannot hear or see outside of a limited spectrum,
nor can we directly discern the innumerable physiological activitiesthat are at the core of our experience. In a modern sense, Buddhist
psychology recognizes that consciousness is ultimately based in
the body. For this reason, many activities that contribute to our
experience are beyond discernment. Indeed, psychological analysis
may be conceived as a coming to grips with the limits of personal
revelation.
Biblical scholars attempted an exegesis of what was concealed by
the technique of hermeneutics, in which similarities were soughtamongst different textual statements. The Talmudists (Taubenhaus,
Wise et al. 1918) suggest that several levels of meaning are embed-
ded within biblical text, i.e., they viewed the biblical texts themselves
as symbols. In fact, Biblical Hebrew, the original language of the
Old Testament, is based on a system of three letter consonant roots
without vowels. These roots have multiple potential meanings and
represent a quasi-symbolic language, so that meaning must be
gleaned from the words in context. On the other hand, Greek, thelanguage of the New Testament is based on a primarily descriptive
language.
The revealed or literal meaning of a verse in scripture corresponds
to the manifest dream of psychoanalysis. Freud approached the latent
dream hermeneutically comparable to Aristotle’s approach of
similarities. However, the hermeneutic approach is highly subjective
and fraught with dif ficulties from the perspective of modern science.
William James, the father of modern psychology referred to Freud’spsychoanalytic approach, as “a dangerous method”, because it
tends to confuse subjectivity and objectivity (Kerr 1992).
Freud never considered dreams as a creative process, except to the
extent that they censored the id and he has been criticized soundly
for refusing to acknowledge a primary role for creativity in mental
life. However, in adopting this stance, Freud remained true to his
theory of the neuroses. In this, creativity and play could only repre-
sent sublimations of the insistent biological motivations to procreateor to aggress against others. As Sulloway suggests, Freud’s sexual
theory is best described as psychological Darwinism.
Freud initially dismissed as spiritual occultism the possibility that
procreation might itself be the biological aspect of a greater universal
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law that governs creation and destruction. But as a result of clinical
disappointments with patients exhibiting self-destructive and repeti-
tive behaviors, Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle ( (Freud 1920),developed a model of the psyche in which two supraordinate
instincts of creation and destruction as Eros and Thanatos were
engaged in perpetual struggle. In so doing, Freud had unwittingly
adopted the ancient beliefs of Hinduism, where the universe is the
result of endless cycles of creation (Brahma), preservation (Vishnu),
and destruction (Siva). However, by this time the majority of Freud’s
followers were entrenched in the “pleasure principle” and they
effectively resisted the Master’s “new” heterodox view.
Jung
Carl Jung (Figure 2) was an early protégé of Freud’s, who developed
a school of depth psychology that continues to adopt dream inter-
pretation as its major therapeutic approach. Jung was a trained
psychiatrist, who took exception to Freud’s view of the unconscious
as both too limited and pessimistic.14 But despite Jung’s desire to be
independent of Freud, the school of psychology that he developed
FIGURE 2 Carl Jung
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termed analytic or complex psychology,15 shares many features with
psychoanalysis. Jung, like Freud and other scientists of the day, was
greatly influenced by Darwin. Neurotic conflict, according to Jung,was caused by a split between the ego and the unconscious that left
the unconscious inadequately represented within the psychic econ-
omy. Jung saw this split not only as a consequence of repression
but also as the result of societal influences. This can be restated
in modern psychological terms to suggest that semantic networks
are now the dominant mode of experience, and tend to exclude
imaginal-symbolic affect schematas.
Jung posited no a priori positive or negative valence to the uncon-scious. Instead, he conceived of it as an amoral matrix from which
consciousness emerges. He further considered the psyche to be a
self-regulating system, in which the unconscious compensates or
complements the perspectives of the conscious ego, often via refer-
ences in dreams to what has been excluded from consciousness. In
Jung’s view, the contributions of the unconscious are potentially
therapeutic, as they tend to modify overly rigid and biased per-
spectives of the ego. The primary goal of Jungian psychotherapydiffers from that of psychoanalysis, as the former emphasizes the
realization of psychic wholeness rather than the overcoming of
repression. This is achieved by establishing a new psychic center
that is not located entirely within consciousness. Jung identified the
Self as the actual center of the psyche.
Some of the differences between Jungian and Freudian psychology
are more apparent than real. But they do adopt a very different tone
in their attitudes towards the unconscious. Freud certainly agreedthat the unconscious contributes to our everyday experience. How-
ever, the metaphors of psychoanalysis are primarily those of a mili-
tary encounter,16 with the unconscious framed as the enemy. One
senses in reading Freud that the goal is for the ego to recognize the
unconscious, and then to develop mastery over it. Freud’s idea of
the most advanced psychological achievement is the sublimation
of the id, i.e., the ability to channel id impulses towards acceptable
societal goals. He concludes that ultimately the reality of the humancondition is that we are all destined to suffer but that neurotic misery
should be overcome.
Interestingly, Freud’s ultimate conclusion is where the Buddha
begins with his First Noble Truth, i.e., that all life is suffering (dukkha).
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But the Buddha sees the possibility of freeing oneself from
this suffering by radically deconstructing the self. The Buddhist
therapeutic solution, or the Eightfold Path, is designed to pro-foundly reconfigure the psyche, so that ultimately the psychological
illusion of a self no longer exists (anatman), at least as we con-
ventionally recognize it. Buddhism is the ultimate polemic against
narcissism.
Neither Freud nor Jung were prepared to go that far, although
Jung did incorporate aspects of Buddhist psychology into his theory
of the psyche. Jung sought to develop a secular psychology based
on the life of the individual, what he termed individuation, whichwas oriented to the underpinnings of the Judaeo-Christian psyche
in the West.17 Rather than mastering the unconscious, Jung fostered
an ego perspective that demonstrated increased awareness of the
unconscious archetypes. However, critically and unlike Freud, Jung
suggests that the acceptance of a new psychic center, the Self , requires
faith that the unconscious is nothing other than a part of the Self .
This acceptance effectively ends the internal struggle that charact-
erizes neurosis. As the Self is also equated with the image of God(imago dei), it follows that the Jungian system is a religious one in the
original sense of the term, i.e., re ligere, to re-connect. Like Pauline
Christianity, Jung promises salvation via acts (work in analysis) and
faith (acceptance of Self ). Freud rejected this view as illusory.
Structural Models of the Psyche
In the Ego and the Id (Freud 1923) Freud (Figure 3) introduced a
structural model of the psyche that included the ego, the id, and the
superego. This replaced his earlier topographic model of a system
conscious, pre-conscious, and unconscious. In the structural model,
all of the elements, including the ego are invested with unconscious
components. The superego’s role is to monitor the ego, and as such it
is the source of self-criticism and guilt. Freud postulated that thesuper-ego was a product of the resolution of the oedipal complex
and was yielded by an unconscious identification with parental
mores. If harsh or inadequately developed, the superego contributes
to the development of psychopathology.
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The Archetypes
Jung’s model of the psyche was also structural, but it was based
primarily on symbolic images as they appear in dreams and fantasy
experiences. Unlike Freud’s model, which is rooted in the potentialconflicts between its elements, the Jungian psyche is a “secretory”
model, as it posits that contents derived from the deepest levels
of the unconscious are progressively modified, prior to emerging
into consciousness. Jung postulated that the psyche was primarily
organized by a set of unconscious structural motifs that he termed
archetypes (arche = coming before and typos = form). This idea was
borrowed from Plato’s idea of the ideal form (Cantor, Aristotle et al.
1968) and from Kant’s (Kant 1781) concept of the priori.
18
According to Jung, personal experiences are organized by deeper
transpersonal motifs. For Jung, the image of one’s mother in a
dream, or in wakefulness for that matter, was the product of learned
associations configured around a deeper mythopoietic image of a
FIGURE 3 Sigmund Freud
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“Great Mother”.19 The idea implies that the mind has evolved
expectations of mothering as part of its inheritance and that the
archetypes reflect this, not necessarily as innate images but as thepotential to generate certain images.20 Jung’s concept of the archetype
as an innate predisposition towards organize experience was con-
sidered radical in its time, and even today, psychologists rarely
credit Jung with this insight. But few cognitive psychologists would
currently argue that the infant’s psyche is a “ blank slate”.21 As
Kagan notes:
The ability to establish perceptual and visceral schemata, present before birth, permits newborn infants to create schemata for some
events in fewer than ten trials. Newborns can discriminate between
recordings of their own cry and the cry of another infant . . . Infants
are born with biases to attend to particular properties of objects.
Jung recognized that all human experience was necessarily psycho-
logical. For that reason, his interests extended beyond psycho-
pathology to include how the human mind viewed the universe andhow the psyche and the outer world might be linked. For this rea-
son, his interests in the archetypes extended to natural phenomena,
some of which cannot be viewed as properly psychological. Jung
was attempting to address how the laws that govern the physical
world were represented via the activities of the psyche. For example,
the fractal rules that describe the fluid dynamics of rivers and the
branching of trees also describe the dichotomous branching of
neurons, blood vessels, and airways. This could potentially accountfor the tendency towards dichotomous branching in mental events,
what Jung termed the opposites.22
Jung suggested that the archetype functioned along a spectrum
that he likened to the electromagnetic spectrum with its poles in
both the infrared and ultraviolet. Archetypes were expressed both in
the outer world and in the human psyche, by virtue of the fact that
they represented the natural laws that govern energy and matter.
From the perspective of Eastern philosophies, these rules have beenreferred to as dharmas, to be distinguished from the same term that
is also used to denote the specific teachings of the Buddha. Dharmas
are rules for how all energy and matter interact and they extend to
the psyche.
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Jungian psychology often appeals to religious-minded indi-
viduals, scientists, and New Age aficionados,23 because it attempts
to bridge energy, matter and psyche.24
However, as Jung pointedout, as there is no Archimedean point outside of the psyche by
which to make observations, all conclusions about the outside world
are necessarily psychologically-dependent. This does not imply that
there is no world independent of psyche, but it does suggest that
there is no way to appreciate that world beyond the activities of the
psyche. However, the fact that we can, e.g., land a man accurately on
the moon, appears to indicate that our psyche and the outer world
are both governed by the same natural rules.
The Complex
Jung’s model of the psyche relies critically on the role of the complex.
The presence of complexes was first introduced as a result of Jung’s
research with the Word Association Experiment. He noted that
when subjects were given a stimulus word and asked to report a
verbal association to it as rapidly as possible, certain words regu-
larly produced disturbances in the latency of response. These varied
with individuals but they were similar within families. In addition,
these disturbances in latency were associated with changes in heart
rate, respiratory rate, and galvanic skin responses. They affected the
autonomic nervous system, and they are the experimental basis of
what we currently refer to as affect.25 Kagan paraphrases Jung in
modern scientific jargon:
Because the visceral schemata linked to an emotion are more fully
represented in the right than in the left hemisphere, it is likely that
events that engage schemata more often provoke activity in targets of
the autonomic nervous system
In other words, the complex, as defined by the Word Association
Experiment links a semantic network via the stimulus word, to
encoded schemata that are, in turn, linked to autonomic nervous
system activation.
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Jung’s work stimulated Freud’s curiosity, because he saw it as
empirical confirmation of his theory of the unconscious and of the
neuropathic effects of repression. Jung subsequently developed thetheory that mental associations were linked to physical states by
complexes and that these were autonomous “splinter personalities”.
A goal of Jungian analysis was to dissemble the complexes that held
sway over the personality. For this reason, Jungian psychology has
often been referred to as complex psychology. Jung later theorized that
the complexes were themselves rooted in archetypes.
As both personal and impersonal factors contribute to the develop-
ment of the complex and to conscious experience, a crucial aim of Jungian analysis is to become increasingly aware of both. Jung
argued that impersonal archetypal elements were best revealed by
the mythic, imaginal, and artifactual productions of civilization.
Awareness of these motifs is as central in a Jungian analysis as is
the patient’s developmental history. Whereas it is possible to use
archetypal references to avoid painful personal insights, Jung argued
that part of what contributes to personal unhappiness is failing to
appreciate that individual psychological life also reflects sharedtranspersonal experiences, which are the common lot of humanity.
The isolation reported by neurotics may at times be greatly alleviated
via archetypal interpretations.
Jung also viewed his type of analysis as primarily beneficial to
patients in the second half of life, a time when questions concerning
the meaning of life are often seriously entertained. As in Eastern
meditation practices, Jung assumed that a substantial degree of ego
stability was present prior to embarking on an archetypal analysis.
26
Unfortunately, in modern times, standards of psychological health
appear to have changed, so that it is rare to encounter patients who
have resolved their “personal” issues at virtually any stage of the
life-cycle.
Jung’s Model of the Psyche
The elements of Jung’s model of the psyche are diagrammed below
(Figure 4). They reflect his conception of how the archetypes are con-
figured within the psyche based on figures encountered in dreams
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and in other altered mental states.27 It is important to note that
Jung’s model is phenomenological, i.e., it is based on his personal
imaginal experiences and on the reported dreams of others. It
differs with Freud’s model, which is descriptive, conceptual, and
abstract.28
Persona
As part of consciousness, both the persona and the ego mediate with
the outer world. Persona is the Greek term for the mask worn by
players in the theater. Jung recognized that few individuals display
the same “face” during all of their interactions.29 The persona is often
diagrammatically positioned “above” the ego, because it is con-structed, in part, via the influence and expectations of others. For
example, were a client to enter a lawyer’s of fice, he or she would
most likely be confused and possibly put off if the lawyer were
knitting a scarf, because this is not the expected behavior.30 Indi-
viduals who do not effectively assume a specific role in society can
be said to have an inadequate persona. On the other hand, as Joseph
Campbell (Campbell 1988) remarked, if one cannot shed an over-
developed persona, he or she would be considered a “stuffed shirt”.Individuals on both sides of the spectrum of personas abnormality
are commonly encountered in psychotherapy.
Winnicott’s term “false self ” represents the persona in defense of
the “true self ” (Winnicott 1965). Kagan cites the example of two
FIGURE 4 Jung’s model of the psyche
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subsets of children who both exhibited a set of distinct objective
physiological stress responses that are associated with social-
inhibition. One group was behaviorally averse to interaction withlaboratory workers, whereas the other was not. It could be said that
in the social situation the latter group had adopted a “false-self ”
affable persona in contrast to their anxious “true self ”. Experiments
designed to assess affect based on facial responses have yielded
misleading results in persona-conscious Japanese subjects when
they are aware that they are being observed. Jung recognized
that it is normal to assume different roles at different times, and
that it does not necessarily imply an underlying psychologicaldisturbance.
The importance of persona is well illustrated in traditional Eastern
societies. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna emphasizes to Arjuna that
it is imperative that he engage in battle against his evil cousins,
because, as a member of the warrior class, it is his dharma,31 i.e., his
role in society (Mitchell 2000). In structured societies, all members
are expected to play at their defined role. But a role can at times
conflict with the wishes of the individual. Nevertheless, it is impor-tant to recognize that the importance of the individual is a perspec-
tive that developed primarily in the West as part of the legacy of the
ancient Greeks (Campbell 1949). After a latent period in the Dark
Ages, the importance of the individual again blossomed in the
Renaissance and it has persisted in the West, reaching its apogee in
the present “Age of Narcissism”. The rigid societal norms of the
East, where “losing face” continues to be the primary source of
shame, can be off-putting to Westerners, who do not value thisperspective. Yet, in the traditional East, an individual at odds with
society and his or her persona is considered to be “nobody”.32
Ego
The ego in Jung’s model is a complex structured by an archetype, as itinvariably mediates between the inner and outer experience of the
individual. It is the organ of consciousness and includes, according
to Jung, the diametrically opposed functions of thinking and feeling,
as well as sensation and intuition. The core of ego consciousness
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contains a lacuna, much like the eye at the center of a hurricane. Like
Freudian analysis, Jungian analysis seeks to expand ego conscious-
ness but as previously noted, its primary goal is the consciousrealization of the archetypes, not sublimation of the drives.
Shadow
Shadow corresponds roughly to the Freudian—or what Jung termed
the personal—unconscious. Virtually all of Freudian, and much of Jungian, analysis are based on confronting and re-integrating shadow.
In its broadest connotation, shadow refers to any aspect of psyche
outside of consciousness. But as a person is required to cast a
shadow, it is generally limited to those aspects of psyche disavowed
by ego consciousness. The shadow has been portrayed many times
in literature, e.g., in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and in Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
As an unconscious element of the psyche, the shadow is susceptibleto projection. Most Freudians view projection as a process in which
split-off elements of psyche are transferred onto others, as in
the transference and in “projective identifications”. Excessive projec-
tion is observed in patients with rigid ego psychopathologies,
where there is a harsh super-ego, e.g., in narcissism, paranoia and
obsessive-compulsive neurosis. However, Jung recognized that pro-
jection is also a normal operation of the psyche, whenever it con-
fronts elements in the outer world that are unknown. For example,the Aztecs erroneously “projected” aspects of their mythology onto
the Spanish Conquistadors, a mistake that led to the destruction
of Aztec civilization. The unconscious itself is the projection of a
hypothesis onto activities that we do not comprehend.
Jung chose to illustrate the projective aspects of the psyche via an
in-depth examination of its evolution. In his writings, he focused
primarily on the role of alchemy to explicate his ideas. Alchemy is
widely considered to be the precursor of modern chemistry. Atone level this is correct. But Jung recognized that alchemy was also a
sophisticated system of thought33 that served as a philosophical
undercurrent within traditional society. The alchemical opus was
devoted to the parallel transformation of matter and psyche, in an
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effort to create the “gold” or the philosopher’s stone. The goal was
not merely to produce a precious metal but also to transform the
personality into an integrated spiritualized body. Jung recognized that alchemy was primarily the result of the
projection of the psyche onto matter, at a time when virtually noth-
ing was known about the actual structure of matter. Unfortunately,
Jung’s interest in alchemy has led some to dismiss Jungian
psychology as both arcane and superstitious. But it is perhaps more
accurate to conclude that Jung’s interest in psychology extended
into areas of human endeavor that were not primarily medical in
nature, including alchemy, parapsychology, physics and religion.Psychological projections are at the root of conflicts between
people, societies, and civilizations. They reach their peak expression
during times of conflict, when both sides project their most vile dis-
avowed aspects onto one another. War propaganda is soundly based
on exploiting shadow projections. These projections are taken to be
truths concerning the other, which then allows the individual, group,
or state, to systematically devalue and kill the enemy without
encumbering guilt.34
To Jung, and to many others, shadow is the areawhere depth psychology and morality rightly intersect. The idea that
psychology should be amoral is as impossible as it is unwise.35
Anima/Animus
The contrasexual archetypes, i.e., the anima and animus, have noclear parallel in Freudian psychology. They symbolize a compo-
site symbolic image of the psychological features of the opposite
sex. Jung viewed these as “foreign”, i.e., as less available to con-
sciousness, and, as such, more deeply unconscious. The role of
the contrasexual archetypes has become increasingly controversial
in modern times, as differences between the psychologies of the
sexes become less defined and perhaps even less politically correct
as a topic of speculation. Nevertheless, contrasexual dream figuresappear to play an important role in the psyche and in dream
interpretation.
Recognizing the anima/animus is especially critical for the with-
drawal of projections directed at the opposite sex. These projections
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are the cause of many dysfunctional transactions, including most
marital conflicts. They also underlie the tendency to become dis-
enchanted with a partner, when he or she no longer serves effectivelyas a “hook” for projected fantasies.36
Collective Unconscious and the Self
Jung conceived of the collective unconscious as the source of the deep-
est structural motifs of the psyche. It is influenced by innate endow-ment, as well as societal attitudes and beliefs. One rarely encounters
incontrovertible evidence of the innate collective unconscious and
independent proof of its existence is controversial.37 However, there
is little doubt that aspects of human unconscious process are shared
amongst individuals. Jung cited ethological evidence that new-
born chicks respond aversively when confronted with the shape of
a chicken hawk’s wing. These reflexive instincts are rarely encoun-
tered as unsheathed in humans as they are in other animals. Never-theless, as Pinker points out, the human psyche certainly has certain
innate predispositions (Pinker 2002). Kagan captures the unique yet
shared qualities of the human psyche as follows:
Although hominids share many psychological qualities with other
primates, evolution awarded our species a number of unique proper-
ties. Elaborate semantic networks, a generative syntax, the uncertainty
that accompanies detection of inconsistency in those networks, amoral sense, guilt, assignment of self to a web of symbolic categories,
and the ability to infer the thoughts and feelings of others are some of
the species-specific features that in combination distinguish us from
all other animals.
Jouvet gives an interesting example of identical twins separated at
birth, who described having identical and recurrent dreams (Jouvet
1999). Melanie Klein (Klein 1984), one of the first psychoanalysts tofocus on the psychopathology of children, includes references to
innate primitive images within the psyche in her writings. However,
whether these images reflect memories of early experience has not
been established with certainty.
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The supraordinate archetype of the collective unconscious, the Self ,
is a unique concept38 in all of depth psychology.39 Although Jung
in his Collected Works referred to it with a small “s”, it has tradition-ally been capitalized in recent texts, in order to convey its relation-
ship to the God-image. As the dominant archetype of the psyche, the
Self includes both biological and spiritual referents. On one hand,
according to Jung, it is the organizing archetype of the individual
psyche-soma and I have elsewhere discussed its contributions to
psychosomatic organization (Kradin 1997, Kradin 2004). But Jung,
influenced by the concept of Atman in the Samkhya philosophy of
India, also referred to the Self as “the center and circumference of acircle”, an effort to convey its paradoxical and transcendent features.
The Self is the quintessential Jungian symbol. Jung’s conception
of the symbol includes transcendental implications. In addition to
having inexhaustible referents, the symbol, according to Jung, unlike
a “sign” points to elements that cannot be defined in conventional
terms. This invariably results in a muddled definition that may be
off-putting to those who demand precision. This is always a poten-
tial problem with the symbolic approach. As the philosopher MichelFoucault notes (Foucault 1994), symbols lead to:
a self-multiplication of significance, weaving relationships so numer-
ous, so intertwined, so rich, that they can no longer be deciphered
except in the esoterism of knowledge. Things themselves become so
burdened with attributes, signs, allusions, that they finally lose their
form.
But this is precisely the effect that Jung was attempting to convey
because for anything to be all at once the center and circumference of
a circle, i.e., here, there, and everywhere, demands a willingness to
entertain paradox. The same mindset characterizes the Zen koan. The
koan poses an insoluble problem to the Zen adept, until the mind
transcends causality and reason, and opens itself to a transcendent
experience that cannot be expressed via rational thought. Jung did
not view transcendence as beyond the limits of psychology. Instead,
he insisted that the mystical experience was a psychological one
and differentiated it from theology, which is not a proper topic for
psychology.
Jung believed that religious inclinations were an innate feature of
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the human psyche, as opposed to Freud who dismissed religion as
illusion.40 Jung saw man not only as homo sapiens but also as homo
religiosus. The Self , according to Jung, directs the psyche towards theego towards the recognition of wholeness. For this reason, symbols
of the Self in dreams and myth connote wholeness, e.g., circles, man-
dalas, the number “four”, precious materials, and specific sectarian
referents, e.g., the fish as a symbol in early Christianity.41
Jung claimed that the psychological experience of the Self is
imbued with what Rudolph Otto (Otto 1923) termed numinosity, i.e.,
an affect state associated with mystical or oceanic experiences that
can be evoked by art, music, nature, ritual, meditation, or via intim-ate experiences with others. Jung stressed the importance for mental
health of a balanced relationship between the ego and the Self ,
a concept that Edward Edinger, a Jungian analyst, popularized
as the ego-Self axis (Edinger 1972).
Jung’s theory of psyche was based largely on his study of dreams
and on what he termed active imagination. The latter represents
interactions with imaginal figures while in an altered state of con-
sciousness. In his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Re flections (Jung1961), Jung describes his experiences with an ensemble of imaginal
figures that he was able to identify, repeatedly, within dreams and
fantasies. He recognized that these figures were symbols that con-
veyed critical information about his psyche in a predictable manner.
His encounters with the unconscious had a powerful and, at times,
draining effect on Jung’s psyche. Ellenberger (Ellenberger 1970)
referred to this period in Jung’s life encounters, as a “creative illness”,
in order to distinguish it from a schizophreniform break. How-ever, it is more likely that this period represented an encapsulated
manic-depressive psychosis.42
Jung recognized that dreams were an intrasubjective commentary
and that certain symbols tended to recur in dreams. These included
images of the psychic archetypes, i.e., ego, persona, shadow, anima/
animus, and Self . He postulated that by recognizing how these sym-
bols manifest in dreams, it was possible to elucidate the autonomous
activities of the psyche. As the activities of the psyche are botharchetypal and personal, Jung termed their conscious elucidation
individuation and posited that it was life’s primary goal. Individuation
underscores Jung’s belief that neurosis is ultimately an existential
issue that cannot be overcome unless the meaning of one’s life has
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been recognized.43 In a collective sense, Jung believed that man was
in a unique position to reflect on his place in the universe because of
having evolved the capacity to think and reflect. Jung believed that it was therapeutically important to trans-
form ideas into images in order to give them form. As previously
noted, the tendency to reify concepts is a strong inclination in
the psyche. Classical Jungian dream interpretation calls on the
dreamer to create pictures and other artefacts that depict dream
images, in order to flesh them out into something tangible. Jung
recognized through his researches with complexes that affects44
were associated with images, and that by embodying concepts asimages that it was possible to access feelings more effectively.
This supports the role of iconography as one gateway to numinous
experience.
Jung’s approach to dreams is based on his conception of the
unconscious. Because the Jungian unconscious is not only a reposi-
tory of repressed elements, its manifestations, including dreams,
don’t require disguise. However, the mode of thought that char-
acterizes the unconscious and dreams is symbolic and must beapproached differently than discursive thought. Whereas Jung con-
sidered dreams to be transparent, their meaning can only be gleaned
by those who perceive the implications of symbolic thought. The
translation of dream images into the discursive language of the
waking ego is best achieved, according to Jung, not by a fixed
understanding of dream symbols,45 or by free-association,46 but by
what he termed ampli fication.
Amplification
Ampli fication is an exegesis of symbols via their referents. This
requires the knowledge of how symbols have historically been
adopted in myth, literature, and art (Campbell and Abadie 1974).
It also requires the ability to recognize relevant similarities, asAristotle suggested (Aristotle 1985). As symbols in dreams poten-
tially convey inexhaustible meaning, no single dream interpretation
can ever be “correct”. Instead, interpretations are selected based on
their apparent relevance at the time of interpretation, with the
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implicit understanding that perspectives on the dream’s symbols
are likely to change with time. This favors a perspective of interpre-
tive relativism, in contrast to Freud’s positivistic approach towardsdream interpretation.
The technique of amplification “circumambulates” the image,47 in
an effort to expand its potential referents. Unlike free-association,
amplification insists on returning to the specific images of the
dream. From Jung’s perspective, free-association is likely to yield
insights that are independent of the dream image. In addition, this
approach can theoretically serve to defend against affects that are
embedded in the specific dream images. Jung remarked that if apatient dreams of a “deal table”, then all efforts must be expended
towards understanding why that specific table, and not another, was
selected by the psyche for its dream narrative.
Notes
1. Rabbi Chrispa in the Talmud expressed his skepticism concerning dream
interpretation as follows: “The sadness of a bad dream is suf ficient to it,
and the joy of the dream is suf ficient to it.”
2. This is not exactly accurate. Whereas most dreams appear to occur
during REM sleep, dreams occur during other stages of sleep as well.
3. Consider the results of the following experiment, in which a subject is
told to voluntarily move his arm. Electrodes attached to the musculature
of the arm indicate that motor activity begins before the subject isaware of having made the decision to move the arm. It appears that
unconscious processing has already prepared the arm for movement
before consciousness is aware of its “decision”.
4. This is also a relative statement. Dream research demonstrates that the
majority of dreams for most people are best described as “mundane”.
5. Interestingly, this is how feelings are also defined in Buddhist
psychology.
6. I stress the conventional experience as experienced meditators report
time and events as moments that come and go without clear continuity,more in line with the idea of time as a cyclic phenomenon.
7. Fraser’s text is particularly fascinating. He divides the psychological
experience of time into several categories that can be relevant in the
practice of psychotherapy.
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8. The term “psychoid” was introduced by Eugen Bleuler and appears
repeatedly in the works of C.G. Jung. It refers to those aspects of psycho-
somatic function that are beyond the range of experience. This wouldinclude all that is unconscious as well as the physical underpinnings of
the mind. In its broadest sense it also applies to parapsychological
phenomena.
9. This begs the obvious question as to whether time exists independent
of the psyche. Certainly, there is good post facto evidence that there was
a time before man arrived on the scene. In physical terms, atemporality
refers to events prior to the “Big Bang”. However, it is meaningless
to refer to this as preceding the event as the absence of time means
just that.10. Primary consciousness and biotemporality may be seen as the goal of
certain types of meditation that promote being in the moment. However,
the ability to be in a state of momentary psychology with the capacity for
discernment suggests that discernment is a primary quality of primary
consciousness. However, the absence of tense implies that this mode of
discernment is distinct from what is experienced during secondary con-
sciousness. It is apparent that most animals can discern differences
with their mode of consciousness, but to what degree they can
distinguish past from future is uncertain.11. Despite the accuracy of this statement, the images of dreams are the
product of a mind that does not function by the rules of wak
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